Thoughts on Berlin
Given the name of our blog, it’s unfortunate we haven’t yet discussed anything related to Germany. Thanks to the terrific Kulturblog travel budget, however, we can now remedy that. Last month I spent a couple of days in Berlin wandering around the city core, lounging in cafes, and checking out monuments and buildings. What follows is a collection of random thoughts, mostly on architecture, and links to photos of what I’m talking about.
The Palace of the Republic is an East German government building that is slated to be demolished this year. As a severe modernist building erected in the 1970s, it is horribly conspicuous sitting adjacent to the breathtaking Berliner Dom — Protestant Germany’s answer to St. Peter’s Basilica — and the strictly neo-classical Altes Museum. On the other hand, I have some sympathy for the cadre of artists and activists who are seek to preserve the building as a monument to both the ideals and failures of the GDR. In a way, modern architecture was a moral imperative for a communist East Germany, even ignoring the obvious ideological connections between socialist and modernist ideals. Hitler and his architect, Albert Speer, were slavishly devoted to classical architecture and all things Hellenic, modeling their plans for the new world capital of Germania on ancient Athens and Rome. Likewise, a century earlier the baroque style had been adopted by the Prussians, and thereby had been tainted with militarism and imperialism in the eyes of post-war planners. Modernism was a way to avoid the shadow of German history, and look forward to a better future.
On the other side of central Berlin, past the Brandenburg gate and in the middle of the Tiergarten (Berlin’s equivalent to Central Park), presides the beautiful Siegessaule (Victory Column). Anyone familiar with Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire will recognize the monument immediately: it’s the tower from which the immortals silently observe the pre-unified city. Built to commemorate a 19th-century Prussian defeat of France, Speer moved Siegessaule from its original home near the Reichstag and installed it in a traffic circle in the Tiergarten. It was the site of several military parades celebrating World War II victories, and was intended to be a primary feature of Germania. Looking at the figure of Victory, it impossible to ignore how many crucial world-historical moments have passed below her wings: from Prussian imperialism and the Weimar era to National Socialism, from the devastation and division of Berlin to unification and resurgence. Like Damiel and Cassiel, she’s silently witnessed all.
While Siegessaule is instantly familiar to a fan of Wings of Desire, another prominent locale from that movie has changed so much in the last 15 years that it is completely unrecognizable. In the film, Potsdamer Platz is a barren no-man’s land, covered with weeds and junk. Now, just as it was before was destroyed by Allied bombing, it is a major commercial and retail crossroads. Two of the best examples of contemporary architecture in Europe hold court there: Renzo Piano’s Daimler-Chrysler headquarters, and Helmet Jahn’s Sony Center. Both complexes, which were built amazingly fast after reunification, prove that modernist architecture need not be coldly meditative or oppressive. Potsdamer Platz is also a good place for getting a sense of the size and scope of Die Mauer — the wall. One of the few remaining spans of the wall is located there, and a discrete line of bricks in the pavement and sidewalks indicates its former footprint.
Just south of the Brandenburg Gate lies the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It just opened this summer after 17 years of wrangling, and it is stunning. It comprises 2711 squat concrete pillars. The first association is, of course, a cemetery. But as you approach it, and notice there there are no names — or even words — on anything, and as you begin walking through the narrow paths between the pillars, it takes on the character of a labyrinth. The ground below is never level, so you are always either walking uphill or down, or off-kilter. The varying height of the columns ensure that your vantage point is never the same. It is visually sweeping and profoundly disorienting. The memorial designers had the most difficult of tasks, but they carried it off amazingly well.
A very different, yet equally arresting monument sits on Unter Den Linden. It’s called Neue Wache, or the New Guard House, and it was built as a monument to the Napeoleanic Wars. Over the years, this classical temple has also been a World War I memorial, a memorial to important Nazis, and, after World War II, a shrapnel-ripped ruin. In 1960, East Germany reopened it as the Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism. Finally, in 1993 it was christened the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Victims of War and Tyranny. The interior of the building is totally bare save for a pieta-like sculpture in the middle, seen here. Its focus on the individual and the human is a stark contrast to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews, but it is just as sublime in its way.
There are dozens of other thought-provoking and stylistically interesting buildings in central Berlin. Like New York City, it is impossible to get your head around one district, let alone the whole city, in just a few days. But even my short time there was enough for me to take notice that the new Berlin is here, and it definitely deserves a high place on the list of the world’s great cities.
Really super cool, Greg. Thanks.
Comment by Susan M — September 30, 2005 @ 5:02 pm
The Potsdamer Platz scene from Himmel uber Berlin (Wings of Desire) haunts me even more now that the Platz has changed so much.
Comment by William Morris — September 30, 2005 @ 5:15 pm
William: Same here.
Comment by Greg — September 30, 2005 @ 5:26 pm
This has nothing to do with this post, but I can’t find a way to contact anyone associated with this blog.
You have a page up that says you gladly accept submissions. I submitted an article to the given email address, but it bounced.
Do you still accept guest articles? Where should I send one to? feel free to email me at the address given to the comment system.
Comment by Measure — September 30, 2005 @ 7:06 pm
Measure, go ahead and email me at darth.flannel@gmail.com. Sorry.
Comment by Steve Evans — September 30, 2005 @ 10:07 pm
Phew! I thought this was going to be a post extolling the virtues of “Take My Breath Away.”
Comment by Bryce I — October 1, 2005 @ 9:16 am
When “Sex” and “No More Words” are clearly superior songs.
Comment by Susan M — October 1, 2005 @ 11:33 am
I was sort of broadsided by Berlin when I went there two years ago. It was the first stop on my five week drive around Central Europe, and I hadn’t really had time to read about it before I got there. The entire city is so monumental in scope, very unlike other European capitals I’ve been to. Having said that, I think my favorite parts were the monuments to recent history. The piece of the wall that’s still up, the checkpoint charlie museum, and a previously East German neighborhood that’s turning into a SoHo of sorts. Artists and restaurants etc. Wonderful Russian food. I guess I was just blown away by the strength of the architecture, juxtaposed by the images reminding visitors of how very recent Germany’s communist history is.
Comment by Karen — October 3, 2005 @ 8:43 am
Greg, I love Berlin (it’s where I served my mission) and enjoyed reading about places in Berlin that I feel like I know so well. It is a city that I wish everyone could get acquainted with.
Berlin is the “City of Enlightenment” and the Berliner Dom that you mentioned was a tribute to that when it was commissioned as a church in which all could receive communinion, regardless of sectarian affiliation. This “official” religious toleration under Frederick the Great was reversed in 1788 by his grandson Friedrich Wilhelm II, who issued an edict in that year requiring orthodoxy in religion and a Protestant inquisition-style body to enforce strict censorship provisions that he also enacted at that time.
Anyway, I’m jealous you were in Berlin!
Comment by john fowles — October 3, 2005 @ 5:10 pm
Karen, I think you’re referring to Prenzlauer Berg. When I was on my mission, it was before the gentrification of that area (to the extent that has happened yet) and many of the buildings were still broken down or abandoned and, in some cases, taken over by anarchist punks who made them into mini-fortresses of sorts.
Did you get to Kreuzberg? It is now and always has been the “wild side” of Berlin. There is a saying that you haven’t lived until you’ve slept in Kreuzberg. As this article shows, the attraction of Kreuzberg is partially attributable to its strange mixture of inhabitants: punks and squatters battling police side-by-side with Muslim immigrants from Turkey and elsewhere, or displaced Peruvian or Cuban immigrants, trying to eek out an existence in a place that is extremely foreign to them. Tracting in Kreuzberg was very . . . interesting, although I preferred doors answered by Muslims than those answered by high punk rockers. But I never felt in danger in Kreuzberg, interestingly. Friedrichshain–the Kreuzberg of East Berlin–felt much more perilous to me, and indeed, I was assaulted there and in Marzahn (also a Stalinist housing development in East Berlin) but never in Kreuzberg. . . .
Comment by john fowles — October 3, 2005 @ 5:23 pm
John, I was hoping to get a Germanist to respond. Thanks! I wish you had been with me to provide more information and background about everything. I heard that saying about Kreuzberg from some tour guide or something, but I figured it was probably like Greenwich Village in NYC — not as hip and edgy as it once was or thinks it is — and I didn’t make it there.
And, as much as I love the central California coast, I’m jealous you served your mission in Berlin.
Karen, Interesting comments. I agree with them for the most part, but I was probably even more fascinated (if that is possible) by the Hohenzollern and Prussian sites, and even remnants of Weimar (were there any?), as compared to more recent stuff. I think for most of us Berlin is the Third Reich and the cold war era. But, as John comment indicates, Berlin was a important cultural capital for at least a century before the first World War.
Comment by Greg — October 3, 2005 @ 9:25 pm
John, if you served in Berlin, you must have been valiant in the pre-mortal life, as I was. :>
Not only did I tract in Kreuzberg, I lived there. One day we came home to find “Yankees und Turken ‘Raus!!!” spray painted on our door. C’est la berliner vie.
Do the folks in Kreuzberg still attend the Neulolln ward? I’m pretty sure I was there at least a decade before you. I really, really loved that ward.
Comment by Mark IV — October 4, 2005 @ 12:51 pm
Mark IV, if you were there a decade before me, then you were in the Hamburg mission serving in West Berlin and blocked from going into East Berlin–is that right?
I assume that the Kreuzberg missionaries attend Neukölln still, but I don’t know what changes might have occured in the ward boundaries of Neukölln since I was there. I have been back a number of times since my mission, but I have mostly visited members in the Dahlem and Marzahn wards on those occasions. There have been some minor changes in the boundaries of both of those wards, but you guess is as good as mine on Neukölln. (But actually, if you served there a decade before me, then you wouldn’t know that once the wall came down, portions of southeast Berlin–stuff that had been behind the wall in places like Treptow and Köpenick–belonged to the Neukölln ward for most of the 1990s and might still belong to that ward today.)
My experience in Kreuzberg is almost as colorful, though it does not refer to LDS specifically. We were walking one day near a subway station when a high punk-bum started screaming at us in English: “Already Americanized! Already Americanized!” over and over again. Luckily, we were in our p-day clothes so, although we must have looked very American, we weren’t as conspicuous in that situation as if we had been wearing our white shirts and ties.
If you get a chance, spend some time in the southwest and southeast of the city. It provides an interesting view of two Europes. Southwest Berlin, with Dahlem, Zehlendorf, Grünewald, and Wahnsee is absolutely stunning and pleasant in its modernity and established comfort. Southeast Berlin, with Karlshorst, Köpenick, Friedrichshagen, and even Erkner is also stunning and pleasant in a completely different, crumbling, romantic, eastern Europe way. Both the southwest and southeast have beautiful lakes, with the Wahnsee in the west and the Müggelsee in the east. The areas around the lakes in both west and east are high-end neighborhoods with beautiful homes and parks. The difference is just that the East has a crumbling romantic charm that you cannot find in the west. Doing the Wahnsee area and Müggelsee area in one trip is the equivalent of doing both Düsseldorf and one of either Schwerin, Rostock, or Stralsund in one trip. It is an intriguing and attractive difference (and, to be honest, I prefer Schwerin, Rostock, and Stralsund to Düsseldorf).
Sorry, it’s just too fun to write about Berlin. I wish I lived there.
Comment by john fowles — October 4, 2005 @ 3:00 pm
(The southeast of Berlin is largely devoid of the massive Stalinist housing projects that occupy much of the rest of East Berlin.)
Comment by john fowles — October 4, 2005 @ 3:06 pm
John, yes, I was in the Hamburg mission.
Greg’s pictures brought back many memories for me. Berlin is one of my favorite places in the world. While serving there as a missionary, I even applied at the Freie Universitat because I was pretty sure I would pursue my education there rather than return to Provo. Oh well.
Comment by Mark IV — October 4, 2005 @ 5:07 pm
I lived right by FU while serving in Zehlendorf and one of our investigators, who lived right across the street (Unter-den-Eichen-Straße) from the Botanical gardens, was a master’s student there studying econometrics. We had the most fascinating discussions about social market economies and Fourth Nephi, among other things. I bought some FU memorabilia in the MENSA there. Good times.
Comment by john fowles — October 4, 2005 @ 5:49 pm
Greg,
On the Siegessäule, if I am not mistaken, the golden rings you see around the column itself are made up of captured French cannon from the Franco-Prussian war that have been gold-plated and worked into this monument as a tribute to Prussia’s victory (hence “sieges”) in that war.
Comment by john fowles — October 4, 2005 @ 5:55 pm
Greg, did we have AP European history together? What an introduction to Prussia……
John, it may have been that neighborhood. Unfortunately, we literally spent 4 hours driving around lost, trying to find our hotel, and I was so disoriented when we finally got there, that I just followed my Berlin native friend through the city, paying no attention to where we were. I’m not so helpful!
Comment by Karen — October 4, 2005 @ 7:05 pm
John: Cool! Feel free to pass along other interesting tidbits.
Karen: No AP European History for me (though I had Felt all three years for journalism). I was a slacker. Sounds like I missed out. We did have Spackman’s class together, if I recall.
Comment by Greg — October 4, 2005 @ 8:38 pm
John, now this is really getting wierd. My companion and I used to eat lunch in the Mensa at FU two or three times a week. Lentil soup with sausage and a roll, DM 1,50. I was a greenie there, and I didn’t understand all the words on the menu. I will always be grateful to my senior companion for steering me away from the Kalbnieren.
Greg, thank you for this post.
Comment by Mark IV — October 5, 2005 @ 8:06 am
I haven’t read K-blog in a month, but I decided to check it out today. I hadn’t been in Berlin for 10 years, but I just got back from a few days there. Is that beyond weird, or what?
Sounds like john knows the place, and connects to it, much better than I do. I haven’t spent enough time there, and I only had a few hours for sightseeing this time. Most of my time was spent inside the Humbold-Universität, which has some, uh…interesting communist stained glass windows. I enjoyed the chance to eat Döner kebap and grab some Lindt Weihnachtschokolade, but I have a stronger attachment to other places: Nuremberg, Bonn, the Rührgebiet, or the Münsterland.
Comment by Jonathan Green — October 5, 2005 @ 10:54 pm